In the 14th century, the figures were larger and placed under canopies in each light of the mullioned windows, such figures in rich colours forming a bright belt across the window, surmounted by the canopies, cusped and crocketed, and in strong yellow pot metal, or yellow-cased glass. The borders were narrow, with a somewhat natural rendering of the rose, the maple and the oak.
In the 15th century, a further change took place, figures became more numerous and the canopy or shrine larger, and chiefly in white glass, with the crockets and finials tipped with yellow stain. The coloured border of the earlier glass is entirely absent, its place being taken by the shaft of the canopy, and the crockets, finials and ornaments are square in treatment and based chiefly on the vine leaf.
Fairford church, perhaps, contains the finest series of late Gothic glass A.D. 1500-30. Like the contemporary architecture of the 16th century, the Renascence now influenced stained glass. The canopy still survived, but was horizontal or pedimental in form, with purely classical columns and details. Good examples of this period are the windows of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (1520), where rich Renascence work is introduced into late Gothic mullioned windows. About 1540, transparent enamels were introduced with skill and reticence, but gradually glass painters began to vie with pictorial oil painting in effects of light and shade, the ground work or material losing that beautiful translucent or transmitted colour, which is the chief glory of stained glass. An example showing the degradation of this art is the west window of New College, Oxford, painted by Jervas, 1777, from designs by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
The ornamentation of stained glass naturally followed contemporary architecture in the treatment of style, differentiated only by the technical necessities of material. For instance, in the early English glass ([plate 31]), the details of the ornament have the characteristic spiral arrangement and the trefoil foliage of contemporary architectural ornament, only the foliage is treated more in profile, as being more suited to the technical necessities of leading and brush work.
Most of the detail, however, shows a strong affinity to French contemporary ornament, this doubtless was owing to the influence of French craftsmanship and tradition in the stained glass of that period.
In the 14th century, the English craftsman attained a thorough mastery over his materials, and consequently the type of ornament followed English contemporary architecture more closely.
To sum up, stained glass changed through the different periods from the rich coloured mosaic of the Normans—the equally rich coloured medallions and grisaille glass of the early Gothic—the decorated Gothic, with glass in lighter colours, and a prevalence of yellow stain, culminating in the later Gothic period, when largeness of mass, lightness, and silvery colour, were the characteristics. A beautiful treatment of stained glass, dating from the 15th century was used by the Arabians; this glass, which has a singular gem-like quality, and without enamel or stain, was let into a framework of plaster, which had been cut and pierced with geometrical or floral patterns.
Modern stained glass has attained a high degree of perfection in design and material under Burne Jones, Walter Crane, Frederic Shields and Henry Holiday, with glass such as that produced by Morris, Powell and Sparrow, and the American opalescent glass of La Farge and Tiffany.
The individuality of their work, appropriateness of treatment, based upon the splendid tradition of the past, mark a distinct epoch in history of stained glass.